Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Save Your Flowers

I have SO enjoyed seeing photos of people's Valentine's Flowers on Facebook the last day or so...and, to my surprise, I was even given a dozen of my own red beauties by The Spouse....12 long stemmed stunning roses. Ahh...that Man...You can imagine my disappointment when I woke to find them drooping this morning. Ugh. So, I busted out my skills and saved them.

A few years ago...okay, SIX...but it seems like just a few! I planted rose bushes at our new home...and quickly learned everything I could about roses and showing roses as I was giddy to bring roses to the Co. Fair! One of the best pieces of info I learned was how to keep my cut roses lasting as long as possible....and I later found it to be a helpful hint when helping droopy roses.So, here you go.

1. Fill a clean container with WARM water...not boiling, not LUKEwarm...WARM.2. Cut your roses at a sharp angle with a sharp scissor.

3. Place the roses in your WARM water

4. Put the roses in a cool place. This time I used our fridge...which isn't ideal because of the food in there (roses and fruit aren't a great mix), but it was what I had. When I showed the roses at the Fair I held them in my parent's cold room in their basement.

5. Wait. The roses have been freshly cut and when you put them into the cold they will want to drink all the water they can...making it so they don't droop. (As I recall there was a reason the water had to be warm, but I cannot fully recall the science behind it, so I'll refrain from writing something that I'm not entirely sure of.) With the roses you see below, there were a few who didn't perk up the first time...so I did it again and they responded wonderfully.